A Case for Romantic RoWill: The Party's Perspective
Predictably, there were people who watched Vol. 1 and thought that Robin and Will had something romantic going on. I know these fans don't represent the majority by a long shot, and that most watching at this point know Will is gay and that Robin is lesbian. Still, I can't help but feel like it's worth acknowledging that these fans are onto something that they themselves don't even realize.
What I mean by this, is that while we the audience are fortunate enough to get a front row seat to Robin and Will's moments alone together and what they actually talk about, the other characters around them do not get that same affordance. We are literally being presented with two contrasting perspectives: Will and Robin's VS. the party's. It just so happens that fans who don’t want to see what’s obviously going on, or are too distracted to really care, are falling for the party’s perspective, based on heteronormativity.
If you’re lost just bear with me, because it’s quite frankly hilarious.
The first time we get any acknowledgement of Robin and Will as a sort of duo, it's when Joyce asks Jonathan, Steve and Dustin about the Flux Capacitor during the crawl.
This is easily one of my favorite moments from volume one, where when watching it for the first time I was instantly hit with the implications and couldn't stop laughing.
Most people probably know this, but for those who don't, the Flux Capacitor exists within the fictional world of Back to the Future, meaning it is not real and that's partially why the boys look so confused here.
But there's clearly another layer to this confusion because the delivery of their reactions is so comedic and honestly a bit over the top. Dustin is looking suspect from the jump, with Steve joining him at the end as they both turn their entire bodies away from the road to process what they are hearing. Not only are they realizing that Joyce is clueless that Robin and Will lied to her, but that it involved them running off together, alone.
This scene in just about any other context would be entirely incriminating, if it weren't for the fact that the only two people who know for certain about Robin and Will's sexuality are present. Steve and Jonathan are still confused though, because they only have half of the information, which contradicts what they would usually suspect in a situation like this. Dustin on the other-hand has nothing stopping him from making the most obvious conclusion...
The next notable moment I want to mention, is so blatantly framed as romantic based on the signals Robin herself gave to Will, that it would be naive to think they aren't intentionally leading the other characters to misunderstanding Robin and Will's relationship.
Here we have Will and Robin literally knocking elbows as they have an intimate moment together, laughing and touching and just in their own world, tuning out everyone around them.
And Lucas' comment about them taking their sweet time, does this remind you of anything?
So that makes two party members who have seen/heard things they could easily read as romantic going on between Robin and Will, with it here in Lucas' case being paralleled to his assumption that Mike and El are ‘love-birds’. Lovely.
Now, let's move on to the last member of the party, that being Mike. You might think there’s nothing to go off of when it comes to Mike suspecting something going on between Robin and Will, that's specific to him, but you would be wrong. Because out of all of them, Mike is the only one to outright acknowledge Robin to Will in a way that doesn’t even make any sense if you ask me..?
Initially, when we see the group walking on the field behind WSQK in episode 4, before Robin and Will have their heart to heart in the tunnel, it's Mike and Will who are lagging behind brushing elbows and having an intimate moment. And their conversation literally starts with Mike mentioning Robin and Will’s mom?
I’m sorry, but this is such a weird thing to bring up, given that we never actually see Mike witness Joyce's feelings towards Robin. Sure, you could try to make the argument that Mike and the others were caught up on their antics the following day, and that they all witnessed some of the tension going on there. Maybe Joyce even brought up them playing hooky while explaining the betrayal, something that the show has consistently used in the context of two people romantically. Hell, Hopper even implies that’s what Will might have been doing when he was presumed missing in the very first episode. So, if we're going full-circle here, this is actually pretty consistent with them trying to balance the expectations for both the audience and the characters.
But still, out of all the things Mike could have said to strike up a conversation with Will in that moment, away from the others, why does he feel the need to go with that? There has to be a reason it's on the forefront of his mind...
Could it be that Mike has picked up on his very own hint pointing towards Will and Robin dating, something that we might have missed. Maybe what he heard Robin say on her broadcast before the crawl...
Robin, Vickie and Steve know that she can’t just flat out say the name of her date because it's a girl, and her revealing that would be a little too progressive for a small-town radio station. Luckily, this approach works with the style of her show and has the added bonus of creating some anticipation for the audience watching. Outside of those who already know, and the audience that is shortly going to find out along with Will, no one else has any knowledge of who she is dating. So it's left up in the air, leaving room for the other characters listening to make assumptions. How convenient.
I can’t even blame Mike because the implications of all this are staggering. He hears what Robin says on the broadcast and probably doesn't think anything of it, only to find out the following day that Will and Robin spent the whole night/early morning together, even played hooky, which leads to Joyce being pissed at Robin and making things awkward for a while until things settle. And notably, Robin has not been around any other guy besides Will as of late. So the guy she is dating must be Will, right? At least that's probably what Mike is thinking.
This would perfectly explain why Mike brings it up to Will on the field. We've seen that he's matured a lot since last season. Assuming him and El have broken up, the two boys are back in a place where they used to be, comparable to s1-2. But they're older and these things are inevitable. When presented with evidence that Will is finally dating a girl, Mike's not jumping to avoid it or make it a problem, in fact he's doing something closer to what Will might have done last season when coaching Mike through his relationship with El. He knew this was coming, it was only a matter of time. He's trying to do the right thing and return the favor to Will, he wants to be supportive.
But when he says this, Will instantly brushes it off and switches to sort of acknowledging the whole group, bringing them back to square one. And then suddenly Will is low-key flirting with him and Mike is flustered and dips.
The miscommunication of it all, I have to laugh.
Going into volume 2, there’s going to be a lot of confusion about what the hell just happened with Will killing those demogorgans. Robin and Mike had similar theories about Will, which they both voiced to him, but it was Robin’s words that echoed in Will’s head in those last moments before he saved the others.
Is this something Will would reveal to the whole group? Maybe? Maybe not. I could see it happening a multitude of ways.
Maybe Mike assumes it was his words on the field that inspired Will, followed by Will offhandedly joking that it was actually Robin’s words in the end that helped push him to save them all. Or maybe Will mentions it to the group when explaining what happened and lets them just take it however they want, because he’s not bothered by what they might think/not think anymore.
I do believe the this reveal would predictably seal the deal for the rest of the party and their already existing suspicions about something going on between them.
And since it is likely that if anyone in the party were to vocalize this theory, characters like Joyce, El, Hopper and Nancy could also be in attendance, though it's a lot harder to gauge how they would react. Most of us would probably agree Joyce knows that Will is gay, and so maybe she would instantly deflect and change the subject, or hell maybe she thinks she's completely out of the loop (wouldn't be the first time) and actually considers it. And then there's El, Hopper and Nancy who haven't exactly been keeping tabs like the others. I could honestly see Hopper going along with it easily, while El and Nancy sort of just process the claims, not ruling it out, but also not throwing in evidence to support the claim.
Jonathan and Steve on the other-hand offer a very genius opportunity. This is something that could bring them together in a way that has nothing to do with Nancy, but instead over their individual deeper understanding of Robin and Will. They both have half of the story, evidence for why there is no way in hell the two of them are actually together, and so what would it look like for them to be confronted with the others actually considering it? Funnily enough there was a TikTok that I saw long before s5 premiered, which made a joke about what this exchange could actually look like. Now seeing how Vol. 1 unfolded though, I can’t help but think that there is a very strong possibility they could explore Jonathan and Steve making amends because of their individual care for Robin and Will, which would be pretty special honestly.
And lastly we have the most terrifying perspective of all our characters, which will always lurk in the background whether we like it or not, Murray. Murray was present during that moment on the field. We see him help Lucas open the door to the tunnel, Open Sesame. Have fun, and while he is no longer visible in any of the shots for the remainder of the scene, with the close-ups of Robin and Byler conveniently leaving him out of the frame, we do see him anxiously waiting for their return, with him opening the door for Robin and the kids later. Maybe he saw their exchange, maybe he didn't (but we all know he 100% did).
I know a lot of people don't want Murray to clock byler, and personally I don’t either at this point. Still, I would not bet my money on the Duffer’s refraining from making him acknowledge them at all. They already had him do it in s4, when they were a lot more subtle with hinting at Mike and Will, and so why wouldn’t he do it in the season that they actually get together? Especially when presented with misunderstandings going on amongst the group, all the conflicting perspectives at play, and we've got Murray just watching this dumpster fire and keeping his mouth shut? I would be genuinely shocked if he didn’t say anything to anyone.
All in all, I think what they'd laid out is a pretty entertaining case of straight-bait, which a majority of the audience will have the chance to be in on before (most of) the characters themselves find out the truth, all the while the less obvious straight-bait will be coming in hot right behind them.
cant wait to see the fight between the immovable object (dan's need for privacy) and the unstoppable force (dan's need to brag about phil) play out every monday on hard launch the podcast
SUNI!!!!! can i maybe request byler + giggling while kissing🫢🫢 go crazy with it i know itll make me insanely giddy
liv !! absolutely anything for you !! this got away from me so fast and it's so. it's. well. you'll see. here's kiss prompt #29 - giggling while kissing
“Someone’s in a good mood today,” Will remarks, raising an eyebrow at Mike over the top of his book. “What’s gotten into you?”
Mike just grins, closing the front door behind him. It’s five o'clock on a Thursday, meaning Mike’s had class from ten this morning almost straight through four p.m., with a brief break in between American Lit and his creative writing workshop where he’d run across campus to the good café for a bagel and a coffee. According to all logic and reason, Mike should not be in a good mood. He should, statistically speaking, be in a really shitty mood.
And yet.
“Nothing,” Mike says, dropping his bag to the floor, right there in the entrance to their apartment. “And what the hell? I got home, like, three seconds ago.”
Will keeps the same look fixed on him as Mike kicks his shoes off, sending them tumbling one after the other into the corner of the room. “Call it a certain je ne sais quoi,” Will replies, following Mike with his gaze as he immediately moves to pick up his shoes. “I can tell.”
Mike turns and squints. “You know French?”
“Sure,” Will laughs, then sets his book aside. He stretches, long and lazy along the length of the sofa, socked feet emerging from the ends of the blanket he’s got thrown over him. “Let’s go with that.”
“You don’t know French,” Mike announces. He would know. Will took Spanish with him for all four years of high school – four agonizing years of conjugating the past participle and imperfect subjunctive – and was even brave enough to attempt a brief foray into an introductory college class before finally calling it quits. Personally, Mike thinks it’s impressive Will lasted the semester. Mike had collected his high school credits and never looked back. “I would know.”
“Yeah?” Will leans back on the couch, watches Mike shuffle the rest of their shoes into place on the shoe rack. “Maybe I do.”
He doesn’t. “Prove it,” Mike says, then picks his bag up off the ground and plops it on top of the dining table. “Say something in French right now. Something romantic.”
“Bonjour,” Will says easily. “Mon ami.”
Mike squints even harder this time. “‘My friend’ is not a romantic thing to say, and also, you’re a liar.”
Will frowns. “How do you know French?”
“I don’t,” Mike laughs. “But I read a lot of Agatha Christie.”
Will gives him a weird look, a little incredulous and a little amused, then holds up the book he’d been reading. It’s Mike’s copy of Murder on the Orient Express. “Yeah, I know. You're unbelievable.”
“I’ve been looking for that,” Mike says, even though he absolutely hasn’t. “You thief.”
Will just smiles, beckoning Mike over to the couch with his free hand. “You love me,” he says, which is a lot closer to the mark than Mike would like Will’s rebuttals to his (entirely unserious) jabs to be.
Mike walks over, of course, because Will is right, and Mike loves him, and love makes you do crazy, stupid things – like being happy on a Thursday evening when your head hurts and your body hurts and all you want is to sleep straight through Friday afternoon. Frankly, it’s ridiculous how happy Mike feels. It’s a bit of an embarrassing look for him, actually.
“Hi,” Mike says, entirely unnecessarily, and lets Will pull him down with one hand. He lands sideways, sprawled halfway across Will’s lap, over the top of the absurdly fuzzy blanket they keep at the foot of the sofa.
Will smiles up at him. “Hey,” he replies, easy and warm. It’s also ridiculous, along with everything else, how soothing the single word is as it leaves Will’s mouth, how Mike’s oncoming headache ebbs, ever-so-slightly, at the sound. Will’s still got Mike’s book in one hand, but he folds a page down and sets it on the coffee table, then scoots over to make room, pressing his back up against the sofa cushions. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” Mike sighs, tucking his face into Will’s neck and trying his hardest to not fall off the edge of the sofa. He wiggles his feet under the blanket too, tucks them under Will’s calves, the warm fleece of his pajama pants. “A little tired,” he admits, and Will lets out a sympathetic noise above him. “But good.”
“I’m glad,” Will murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Mike’s head. “And I know for a fact you’re in a weirdly good mood because I folded down the page of your book and you didn’t even yell at me.”
It takes a second for the words to land. Then–
“Oh, you asshole,” Mike laughs, immediately twisting around in Will’s arms to look at his poor, innocent book lying on the coffee table’s coaster-dotted surface. “You were testing me?”
“You told me you didn’t care about that anymore,” Will points out, one arm wrapping instinctively around Mike’s waist as he moves. “You said you were working on it.”
“I am working on it!” Mike protests. “It’s a secondhand copy anyway, it was already dog-eared and– it’s not about that! I just think you’re so–”
“Mhm?”
“So ridiculous,” Mike says halfheartedly, as Will drops a light kiss to his nose, then his cheek. “I’m in a normal mood. A normal, fine, ordinary–”
“Sure–”
“–and I’m not any more happy than usual–”
“–uh huh–”
“Will!” Mike laughs, breaking away from Will’s vice grip, pulling back from where Will had been leaning in to press another kiss to his cheek. “Oh my god.”
Will just smiles at him. His hair is a bit messed up from lying on the couch, and Mike can feel himself warming up, slowly, from the late February chill he’d braved to walk from the bus stop back to their apartment. “Sorry,” he says, a bit apologetic, a bit pleased, and entirely genuine. “You’re just so fun.”
“I hate you,” Mike whispers. He’s sure that any hope of the phrase having even the slightest semblance of effect is vanquished immediately by the way he says it – breathless and adoring and totally, completely lovesick. “You’re infuriating.”
“You love me,” Will repeats, looking even more happy with himself than before, like getting Mike riled up and flustered is the highlight of his day. He pushes a strand of hair out of Mike’s eyes and asks, more seriously, “Are you hungry? You want something to eat?”
“Yeah? You’re gonna cook for me?” Mike asks, as if they don’t know a grand total of maybe five recipes between the two of them.
“Sure,” Will says. “Yeah. It’ll be romantic.”
Last Mike checked, they needed to get groceries, and he’s not sure what they even have that could feasibly be put together for a meal, but Will’s weirdly good at that sort of thing – throwing the most random ingredients together until it resembles something vaguely edible. Not gourmet, by any means, and sometimes not even good, but, like – if you need caloric sustenance, he’s your guy.
Mike isn’t sure how he feels about another one of those meals, though. Especially when he considers the stockpile of tuna cans in the pantry that’s been there for about a million years. He gives Will a suspicious look. “Like what?”
“Don’t give me that look,” Will says, then shoves gently at Mike’s side to get him to stand up. He follows, kicking the blanket off into a haphazard pile on the end of the sofa, and trailing Mike into the kitchen. “Mac and cheese. From a box.”
He hops up onto the counter while Will digs around the cupboard for a pot, then goes about filling it with water. The kitchen is silent for a while, save for the low humming of the fridge, the sharp clicking of the stove as it turns on. Mike watches him move, a low flame of affection bursting to life in tandem with the gas-fueled warmth against his skin. It’s probably dangerous to be sitting so close to the stove when it’s on, but whatever. It’s the only strip of counter that has enough space for Mike to climb onto and still be this close to Will.
“What’s up with you?” Will asks, pulling a box of mac and cheese off of the cupboard shelf and peering curiously up at him.
Mike, a little belatedly, realizes he’s smiling. “Nothing,” he says, as Will sets the box down on the counter next to Mike’s thigh. “Why?”
“I don’t believe you,” Will says, then slots himself easily into the space between Mike’s legs, rests two hands on his hips. “You never smile this much on a Thursday.”
“You’re so hung up on it being a Thursday,” Mike hums, as Will presses his fingers into Mike’s skin, pushing up the soft fabric of his sweatshirt just a little. “Why are you– hey, that tickles!”
Will just grins, watching Mike squirm with no small amount of joy on his face. “Watch out for the fire,” he says, calm and collected and cool as a cucumber, like he wasn’t the one that nearly got him burned in the first place.
“Watch out for the– oh, shut up,” Mike says. Will laughs, low and pleased, and leans forward, tilting his face up.
“Come down here,” he says, frowning. “I can’t kiss you when you’re all the way up there.”
“Not my fault I’m taller than you,” Mike mumbles, but slides off the counter anyway. He lands a bit awkwardly, stumbles half a step forward before Will steadies him.
“I’m hung up on it being a Thursday,” Will says, tucking a kiss to the side of Mike’s cheek, right under his ear, “because you’re always miserable on Thursdays.”
“I am not,” Mike laughs, as Will pulls back. “What gave you that idea?”
“You’re up early and you have a million classes and you never get enough time to actually eat during the day and you never let me forget it,” Will says, the answer a little too immediate for Mike’s liking. He steps closer, presses Mike back up against the counter until the cold linoleum tiles are digging into the small of his back. “And you’re a menace when your blood sugar is low. Is that it? Did you eat a real lunch today? Are you currently operating under normal human physiology?”
Mike thinks back to the solitary bagel he’d eaten in approximately seven bites while running between the English building and the Communications building. “Um. Unless you count me getting an everything bagel instead of plain, then no.”
“Then what is it?” Will asks. “I can tell, you’re so– you’re being so–”
Mike gives him a strange look. “I don’t think I’m being anything,” he says. It’s true – he doesn’t feel any different from normal, except maybe a little warmer and a little fuzzier and a little bit more hungry than on his average day. “What’s your deal? What am I being?”
“Smilier,” Will says, tilting his head like he’s looking for a nonexistent giveaway in Mike’s face. His eyes dart over Mike’s features, slowly, drinking them in.
“That’s not a word.”
“If I guess,” Will starts, ignoring him, “will you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to guess– Will!” Mike shrieks softly, as Will peppers a quick succession of kisses across his cheek and down his neck. “Fuck you, that tickles!”
“Good grade on a paper?” Will hums against his throat, which isn’t really doing much to help with the tickling thing. Mike tries to pull away, but Will’s grip is steadfast, unyielding. “Heard back from your advisor?”
“No, and no,” Mike gets out. “Nothing happened!”
“Don’t believe you,” Will murmurs, then kisses Mike over the bridge of his nose. “Class got canceled?”
“Thankfully not,” Mike laughs, “because we were peer reviewing today– Will, oh my god, why are you–”
“Be honest with me,” Will says, squinting slightly, “are you on drugs?”
“How the hell would I be on drugs,” Mike stares, a grin spreading, wide and giddy, across his face. His chest is aching from laughter, cheeks already tired from smiling so hard. It’s ridiculous how often he feels like this around Will. He didn’t know you could feel so exhausted in such a wonderful way, by such a wonderful thing. A welcome ache, soothing and grounding and exhilarating all at once. “I don’t understand you.”
“Then tell me,” Will says quietly, leaning in again. He kisses Mike, soft and intentional, thumbs rubbing circles over his hips where his crewneck had ridden up earlier, long and slow enough that Mike forgets about it, for a second – the teasing and the prodding and the interrogation – and the warm ache of laughter gives way to something smoother, steadier. He wants to sink into the feeling like a warm bath – or maybe a dry macaroni noodle in a pot of boiling water.
“The water,” Mike mumbles, barely decipherable. “It’s boiling.”
“It’s just water,” Will says, “it’ll be fine,” and kisses him again.
That’s a good point. “Okay,” Mike whispers, and lets the feeling overtake him – Will’s hands, steady and warm where they’re pressed against Mike’s skin. Where his hair is still damp from his shower, because Will is ridiculous and lame and has one morning class on Thursdays and gets to lay around at home for the rest of the day.
Will presses another kiss to Mike’s lips, leans in once, twice, and–
Thud.
“Ow,” Mike groans, pulling away just long enough to squeeze his eyes shut and rub at the back of his head, where the cabinet had oh-so-rudely refused to move out of the way for him. “Great.”
“Mike,” Will says in mild disbelief, biting down on his lower lip. His eyes are sparkling, cheeks a little flushed. God, Mike loves him. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he breathes out, smiling. “I’m– yeah, that was so stupid.”
“So stupid,” Will grins. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Mike groans again, exasperated and drawn-out, and that’s it – Will laughs, bright and happy and eyes going all crinkles at the corners and moves in to kiss him again.
“You’re so ridiculous.”
“Don’t laugh at me,” Mike protests, but he’s laughing too, catching Will’s soft exhales as they leave his chest, leaning forward to press more of his weight into him. Will moves easily, lets Mike grin against his mouth – wide and happy and far too pleased for his own good.
“Okay, don’t tell me,” Will says at last, pressing a final kiss to Mike’s cheek before pulling away. “I’m just happy you’re happy.”
“Will,” Mike starts, then reels him back in with one hand on his wrist. Will looks startled, eyes wide as Mike catches him by the other hand too. “I was– nothing happened, I swear. I was just thinking about you earlier.”
Will blinks. “You were thinking about me?”
“Yeah,” Mike shrugs. Will says this like it’s a rare, wondrous occasion – Mike thinking about him, that is – and not something that usually happens during most of Mike’s waking hours and some of his unconscious ones too. “I was thinking about you. You just– you make me feel better. I didn’t notice anything was different.”
Will just looks at him. “So you’re not on drugs?”
Mike drops his head to Will’s shoulder and sighs, long and bereaved. Will laughs, low and breathy next to his ear, wraps both arms around Mike’s waist, and holds on. “Seriously?”
“I’m kidding,” Will murmurs. “That’s sweet. You– really? What were you thinking about?”
This is embarrassing.
“Just you,” Mike admits, a little muffled into the fabric of Will’s sweater. “Just– coming home to you, after a long day.”
“Sap,” Will says, saccharine and so fond that it seems to be spilling right out of him. Mike can feel it, all the ways Will loves him, like it’s a physical thing that’s taking shape under his hands. They’re what make Mike think about him so often, all the time, in the middle of a painstakingly long lecture or seminar. Turning memories like these over in his mind, the simple comfort in knowing his day is going to get better as soon as Will gets his arms around him.
“Shut up,” Mike says. He turns to kiss along the curve of Will’s cheekbone, right under his eye, where the skin has gone wonderfully pink and creased with laughter, then pulls away. “The water’s been boiling for, like, ten minutes, by the way. Just so you know.”
prompt for @stonathanweek’s first stonathan sunday: “who protects you, though?”
“Dude,” Steve says. “This can’t be good for you.”
Jonathan peels his eyes open to register two separate things, at more or less the same time. One: Steve Harrington, standing over him with his arms crossed, hip popped, and one of his muddied white sneakers tapping disapprovingly on the ground in near-perfect time to the ticking of Jonathan’s wristwatch. Two: the fact that Jonathan has had to peel his eyes open at all, which can only mean one thing.
He fell asleep.
His stomach drops.
Not good, he thinks, because falling asleep means his reflexes are sluggish now, which means it takes him a few extra seconds to process what Steve is even saying. And this means that Steve has had enough time to notice that Jonathan has woken up, and manages to frown even more, getting in an additional “Dude,” before Jonathan manages to frown, blink, and rub his eyes. Not good, because sluggish reflexes defeat the point. Not good, because—
He reaches an arm out, skimming over the hay-covered ground, frantic, frantic, until his fingers close around his gun and he sighs in relief. Secondary sensations to take note of: the twinge in his neck as he rolls it out, the ache settling in between the knobs of his spine, inelastic tension coiling taut in his shoulders, and Steve’s laser-focused stare burning a hole right through Jonathan’s head.
“What?” he insists, trying to play it off, but it comes out hoarse, sleep-rough, and Steve was here before Jonathan opened his eyes at all, so it’s probably not even worth trying. Still, there’s a look in Steve’s eyes that Jonathan doesn’t love, soft in all the wrong ways, that immediately has his hackles raising. When Steve doesn’t say anything — just lets that weird look in his eyes get even more goopy around the edges — Jonathan sits up straighter against the barn door, frowns, and repeats himself. “What?”
He expects Steve to— well, he doesn’t really know what, actually. Steve’s been surprising him these last few months, which always makes him think about the thing Nancy had said when they’d gotten back to Hawkins — about how Steve changed, in the week he and Nancy had spent fighting monsters together in Jonathan’s absence. Enough for her to go on the defensive when Jonathan asked about him, anyway.
Jonathan doesn’t know about all that. He’s known men like Steve before Steve, and he’ll know men like Steve after him. But where he would have expected the Steve of two years ago to scoff, maybe, to roll his eyes and make some offhand comment about how like shit Jonathan looks right now, the Steve of today does none of those things.
Today-Steve holds his hands out, and gestures for the gun. “Give me that.”
“What?” Instinctively, Jonathan clutches it closer to his body. “No. Why?”
“Because,” Steve says, and then he’s kneeling to the floor, dirt and hay and God-knows-what caking up along his kneecaps, another streak of mud along the sides of those white tennis shoes. Jonathan braces himself for it — you look like shit, you’re gonna take someone out with that thing — but Steve just says, “It’s three in the morning. What the hell are you doing?”
“Keeping watch,” Jonathan says, blinking even more forcefully, as if this will clear away the rest of the disorientation lingering there, in the minute creases of his eyelids, the insides of his mouth, the cracks between his molars. It doesn’t do much to help; he finishes blinking and his eyes are on their way to closing again, stinging against the chill of the night breeze.
“Yeah, no shit,” Steve says, both louder than Jonathan expects him to, and — well, more blatantly than Jonathan expects him to. It startles him just enough to make him look over sideways, at where Steve’s silhouette is illuminated by the porch light they installed by the barn door. He’s not sure what he expects to find there, but it isn’t this: Steve’s eyes simultaneously wide with concern and brows furrowed in what seems like confusion. Jonathan opens his mouth to say something, maybe to defend himself, or say hey, man, what the fuck? when Steve seems to realize how it came off and winces before correcting course. “I mean,” he says, quieter now. “I know, you keep— I see you come out here every night, and you don’t come back in until everyone else is starting to wake up again.”
The hey, man, what the fuck? that had been forming on Jonathan’s mouth makes another attempt to make itself heard, but it’s late, he’s tired, there’s a comfortable breeze blowing through the clearing, and in the end, it comes out without any bite. “What?”
It’s Steve’s turn to blink now, long and slow, like he’s realizing that Jonathan’s not doing a very good job at processing what he’s saying. “Go to sleep,” Steve says slowly, over-enunciating now, like a little bit of sleep deprivation automatically means Jonathan’s fucking stupid now. “Seriously,” Steve says, intonation picking up again, falling back into a normal pitch and speed. “How long has it been since you got a good night’s rest?”
“Not that long,” Jonathan says, but it’s probably undercut somewhat by the yawn that sneaks out around it.
Steve makes a disapproving noise, low in his throat, like he didn’t even really mean to, and Jonathan feels himself exhale in response, exasperated and exhausted, two counts turning into three, into six, seven, eight.
He wants to tell Steve that it’s not his first rodeo. That he’s used to this, a routine that comes to him almost easier than breathing: sitting awake in the dark, heart racing and ears straight for the first indication of a noise of distress. Waiting for the sharp creaking of floorboards, a jolt in the bedsprings, a sudden pause in the snores that had previously been floating their way down the hall. The quiet tap of knuckles against his door, a pair of small hands shaking him awake. The thing about the weed, later, is that it helped him fall asleep, but it didn’t help him stay that way. Left him lurching awake at two, three in the morning, heart pounding and sweating through the sheets, waking up again a few hours later feeling like he hadn’t slept at all.
He knows Will doesn’t sleep much these days. He knows Will sleeps even worse when they’ve had a close call, when the threat of something creeping up on them in the night is marginally more real than it normally feels. Steve pulls his knees up towards his chest, like he has no intention of leaving anytime soon, and Jonathan grips the pistol harder in his hand. “It’s fine,” he says. “I have to— someone has to—”
Watch them, he thinks. Protect them. Jonathan’s learned to sleep light, tread light, dream light. Guard up and bearing down.
“Okay?” Steve says, like Jonathan is simultaneously stating the obvious and also missing the obvious, something bright and glaring, right in his face. He puts a hand out again, and Jonathan hesitates; Steve glances down at the gun, raises his eyebrows again, waggles his fingers, and just for a second, Jonathan gets it — the thing Nancy had seen in him, that change. Something vulnerable and open in his expression, the early morning hour, the hair that’s falling into his face instead of standing coiffed up around it. Jonathan hesitates, and Steve says, “Jonathan, I— you think I don’t know you come out here every day?”
Jonathan opens his mouth. Lets it close. No, he hadn’t known that. “It’s not,” he tries again, and then just, “no one else is keeping watch in there.”
It might be the exhaustion, or maybe the idea of Will or Mike or Robin or Nancy sitting up in their sleeping bags, awake, waiting for something to crawl out from the shadows and reach its long claws until the door, but his voice cracks there, wobbling on the precipice of the last syllable in a way that’s nothing short of mortifying.
“I know,” Steve says, too soft and quiet for the easy target Jonathan is making of himself, and then there’s a hand wrapping around his pistol, pulling it gently out of Jonathan’s grasp. “But, like— shit, dude— what about you? Who protects you?”
An unwelcome, panicked laugh bursts out of him, too sudden and too loud for the early morning silence, but Jonathan can’t help it. He’s seen Steve in action, the way Will’s friends follow him around like ducklings in a row. Him and Robin, bodies angled towards each other, tittering away in the corner. Years ago, the idea of Steve protecting anyone would have made Jonathan throw his head back in laughter. Now, his limbs feel heavy, and there’s something open and warm in Steve’s eyes, wide and brown and dark in the dim lighting of the barn’s lanterns, and Jonathan’s fingers are brushing the palm of Steve’s hand as he passes the gun over. He thinks about that stupid baseball bat, the nails he and Nancy had hammered into it, the sound of the wood splintering around the rusty metal, and blurts out, “Do you even know how to use that thing?”
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, like he’s surprised, like he wasn’t expecting Jonathan to take this so lightheartedly. “Do you?” he replies.
Jonathan shrugs. “Enough,” he says.
Steve’s lips tilt upwards. “Enough,” he echoes in response. He turns the gun over, holds it up. Squints into the distance and pretends to shoot.
Jonathan’s eyelids are drooping again, but he glances along the firm line of Steve’s hands, thumb and index finger lined up along the trigger, and is reminded of it again: Steve’s changed. How his hands used to be so fidgety, rapping against their front door, twirling that stupid bat back and forth. How they’re steady now. Jonathan heard about Max, heard Lucas and Dustin tell Mike and Will about that day at the cemetery, Steve’s arms around her after she fell twenty feet out of the sky.
Steve lowers the gun, bumps Jonathan’s shoulders with his. “We can stay out here,” he says. Wary, like he thinks Jonathan’s going to put up a fight, even after laying his weapon down. “If that helps.”
It does help. “Okay,” Jonathan says.
“Okay,” Steve parrots.
Sleep still doesn’t come easy. Jonathan has a sneaking suspicion that it never will, for him. But for the first time in months, Jonathan tips his head back against the splintered walls of the barn, weather-worn and chipped red paint, and lets himself try to get there.
In his dreams, he’s almost always running - away from something or toward someone, lungs tight with unnaturally cold air and blood pounding in his ears. The back of his neck prickling. Knowing no matter how fast he goes, he can’t outrun that.
Tonight, he’s running to Mike. The details are foggy - this was a memory, once, still is when he’s conscious, but in sleep everything warps and changes, mingles together, and it becomes a horrible mishmash of realities. The worst part is, as entangled as it all gets in his subconscious brain, Will’s nightmares have yet to show him a single horror that isn’t - or, wasn’t - real. He doesn’t imagine things, in his dreams. He relieves them, all together, all at once.
At least tonight he knows he’s dreaming, can recognize the fuzzy quality of it. He knows what comes next, the story beats, the conclusion. Sometimes he’s right back in it like it’s a Vecna vision, how everything looked right on the surface but felt slightly off in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. He’s had to learn to lucid dream a little bit, over the years, at least enough to pinpoint the difference; when Vecna tortured him, he showed him nice things. Love. Happiness. Mike. And then taunted him with the knowledge that he could never have it in real life. Will’s nightmares are horrible, yes, but he takes a small solace in knowing that the only thing torturing him is his own brain.
His feet thump on uneven ground, and even though he knows where this is going, it doesn’t make it any easier hearing screams through the trees. Real-Will knows what he’ll find when he emerges from them, but Dream-Will is unsure what the source is, whether he’ll get back to the cabin to find Mike floating six feet in the air or being torn apart by eldritch creatures on the ground. Both have happened. Both uniquely terrible.
He hates to be proven right, when he skids to a halt to find Mike lying prone on the ground, unconscious, blood seeping across hus forehead and into his eyes from a wound in his head, a slash through his shirt and the skin across his ribs, not as bad as it looks, Real-Will knows, but nausea inducing anyway. The offending Demodog crashes away into the woods, scared off by something else, presumably, something Will should be paying attention to but isn’t because- Mike.
Will’s seen Mike a thousand different ways, in dreams and otherwise - talking in low voices in the quiet glow of the Wheeler’s basement, fidgeting restlessly during strategy meetings, sprawled across a mattress with a smile on his lips - but seeing him like this, awake or sleeping, has never failed to make his blood run cold. Mike should not be still, not like this. He’s one of the most animated people Will knows, constantly in motion, and Will would love him in any condition, under any circumstances, but this is unacceptable. He cannot tolerate Mike looking so lifeless.
“It’s your fault,” a booming voice comes from behind Will - he’d forgotten to pay attention to why the Demodog had run off, why his neck is prickling, because it’s always prickling these days, like a check engine light rendered useless by a car that has too many issues to diagnose. And he knows it’s not Henry baiting him now, just the memory of him, but it stings anyway, and God help him, he turns around. “Look what you do,” the thing that was once Henry Creel says, face knotted in disgust, “you bring ruin on everyone you love. You’re getting them killed. Join me and I can make it stop.”
“You’re lying,” Will spits. “You’re the one doing this. Just leave him alone.”
Vecna tilts his head to one side, almost thoughtful. “Why? So he can leave you behind again? There’s only pain there, Will. Come with me.”
“No!” Will screams. He covers his ears. “Go away! Go away! Go-”
Real-Will jolts upright in bed, sweating and breathing hard. He curses quietly to himself, shifting around in the twisted blankets, trying to root himself back in reality, but his heart keeps pumping at lightning speed, threatening to send him into cardiac arrest. It’s happened once before - a Vecna Effect, as Dustin dubbed the various horrors they endured back in the apocalypse - and Will’s never forgotten how it felt, like being eaten alive by anxiety.
The room is dark, so he has to feel around for a minute before he finds the shape of Mike’s body, a lump under the blankets beside him. He’s still, unmoving, and Will knows he’s sleeping, that there’s no danger, that there hasn’t been for a while now, but the image of his flesh torn open and bloody rears inside Will’s head, and bile rises in his throat.
“Mike,” he whispers, a panicked hiss in the dark, and fumbles for Mike’s arm, presses his thumb into his pulse point. The exhale he lets out when he finds it beating steadily, nowhere near Will’s near-tachycardic heart rate, borders on a sob, and he clutches Mike’s hand to his chest like a lifeline. He takes some deep breaths, the weight of Mike’s body beside him a steadying presence, his sleep-slowed breathing setting a metric for Will to follow as he counts his exhales and inhales. Tears spring to his eyes, and he presses his cheek against Mike’s knuckles, followed by his lips.
He remembers what his therapist said, about grounding, repeating back the facts to himself until the nightmare slides away. Henry is dead, he tells himself firmly. He’s been dead for three years. Mike loves me. We’re happy. Everything is okay.
It works, a little, gets him to stop crying at least, and just when he’s about to lay back down against the pillows and try to sleep, Mike stirs. His hand flexes against Will’s chest, and he hums sleepily, a questioning noise. It startles Will back into tears, and he rubs his thumb over Mike’s pulse point again, a reminder.
“Baby?” Mike’s eyes flutter open, still blurred with sleep, and it makes Will smile, the way his pet names emerge more often when he’s sleepy, the soft look on him as he wakes up. Mike blinks a couple times, taking in the scene, then smiles softly. “Oh. I’m alive, Will,” he promises, flexing his hand more purposefully this time. “Promise. It’s okay.”
Will sniffles. “Yeah. Yeah, I know, I’m just- checking.” He kisses Mike’s knuckles again, just because.
“C’mere.” Mike uses his free hand to lift up the blankets for Will to crawl into. Will falls forward gracelessly, still clutching Mike’s arm, and Mike very gently pries it out of his grip so that he’s free to wrap it around Will’s back instead, cradling him. Will makes a noise of protest, wanting to keep feeling Mike’s heartbeat, to fall asleep to it. “Like this,” Mike says by way of explanation, and pulls Will’s head to his chest, so that his ear is pressed directly over his heart.
Will relaxes at the sound of the soft thumping in Mike’s ribcage and makes a noise of approval. Mike chuckles softly and tangles his free hand in Will’s while the other slips under his sleep shirt to rub circles into his back, right where his body shifts with his breathing. Mike likes that, too, likes feeling Will breathe, knowing he’s alive. They have complementary coping mechanisms, as it turns out.
“Want to talk about it?” Mike offers, though his voice is already going slack with sleep again, a low rumble in his chest that Will can feel as much as hear.
He closes his eyes, thinks of the long scar that he knows stretches from the space above Mike’s heart right where he’s resting his head all the way to his opposite pec, considers demanding to see it, to inspect the damage and confirm that it’s been long since healed over, but he refrains. “Nah. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure?” Mike asks, and he means it, Will can tell, even though he sounds seconds away from slipping back into unconsciousness. That’s Mike. His boyfriend, who fought tooth and nail to put the world back together so they could be in it together, who dances with him in the kitchen when he’s happy and holds him when he cries, who spent two hours stringing up fairy lights around their dorm room as freshmen so Will wouldn’t have to sleep in the dark and quite literally dared the RA to report them for the fire hazard, who-
“Oh,” Will says, realization striking him. “The lights. We forgot to turn them on.”
Mike, with obvious difficulty, blinks back awake and glances around the room. “So we did,” he muses, because that’s how he talks, like a nerd, and Will loves him so, so bad. He lets go of Will’s hand, which Will very bravely does not protest, and reaches for the switch on their nightstand. The room is all at once flooded by the warm glow of the string lights tacked up all over the ceiling. “Better?”
“Much,” Will says gratefully, feeling the last of his nerves settle. Mike takes his hand again, pulls it up to his lips and presses a firm kiss to the back of it - in return for the knuckle kisses, Will assumes. “Thanks.”
“Anything,” Mike replies easily. A common refrain; Anything you want, Will. Anything you need. I got you. And it’s true, he does.
When Will drifts back to sleep, his dreams are good.
nothing lasts forever (but let's see how far we get)
“I’m not moping,” Mike sighs, sounding objectively pretty mopey, “I’m just…”
Their sides are already all but pressed together, thanks to the relatively narrow space the bed provides, but Will nudges his thigh into Mike’s too, just to complete the line. “Just what?”
Mike sighs again, this time more frustrated than dejected. “Well, it’s weird, right?” he asks, rhetorically Will assumes, “because we’ve been obsessing for ages over how to save the world and get back to normal, but now that it’s actually happened, I’m realizing that none of us ever talked about what getting back to normal means.”
“Ah.” Will smiles to himself a little. “You want a plan.”
the world stops ending. mike has some feelings about it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“Do I,” Will starts, haltingly, eyes darting back and forth between Mike’s own like he’s already searching for the answer, “make you nervous?”
Mike exhales, his shaky breath too loud in the space between them. It’s hard enough to sort through his own feelings where Will is concerned; it’s another thing entirely to attempt to explain them to Will himself. He looks at Will’s face, the planes of it softened in the darkness, and tries to draw forth the answer closest to the jumbled mass of the truth. “Yes,” is what he lands on, followed by, “maybe. I don’t know.”
in which will visits mike at college and mike has an agenda that yields... mixed results
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
The little girl makes a squeaking noise, shoving her face into the guy's chest and bringing her thumb back up to her mouth. “Uh uh. Wanna stay with you, Daddy,” she implores.
Her dad sighs, leaning back against the bench and placing a hand at her back, glancing apologetically over at Will. “She’s been going through this shy phase,” he says conspiratorially.
Will laughs. “Personally, I’ve been going through a shy phase for almost three decades, so. I get it.”
The guy snorts. “Fair enough.” He peers down at his daughter, who’s still hiding her face in his t-shirt, and smiles a little as he pats the top of her head. “I’m Mike, by the way."
In which Will meets a very cute guy, with an even cuter daughter.
annaxmalina
2087
baratheonpilled
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
titsay
ellievsbear
janainaart
prguitarman
